Judgment and Decision Making

C. Hall Jones & Associates, Inc., specializes in the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of courses and programs in judgment and decision making and critical thinking. The human errors that contribute most frequently to aviation accidents are related to the judgment and decision making and critical thinking capabilities of aviation professionals in all areas of the aviation field.

The Federal Aviation Administration defines judgment as “the mental process of recognizing and analyzing all pertinent information in a particular situation, a rational evaluation of alternative actions in response to it, and a timely decision on which action to take.” (FAA AC 60-22, 1991)

How do we know that judgment and decision making causes the majority of aviation accidents?

• The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that judgment and decision related accidents are “the type of accidents that account for 52 percent of fatal general aviation pilot error accidents.” (FAA AC 60-22, 1991)
   
• The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that “human error is a contributing factor in 60 to 80 percent of all air carrier incidents and accidents.” (FAA AC 120-51D, 2001)
   
• One National Transportation Safety Board study indicated that 88% of aircraft accidents in one 4-year period were directly caused by human error.
   
• Boeing research identifies flight crew error as the primary cause in nearly 70 percent of commercial jet accidents, but they determined that when maintenance, air traffic control, and management are included, the actual accident rate caused by human error may be as high as 90 percent.
   
• Aviation Accident Statistics has determined that human error has been the cause of nearly 60 percent of the fatal aircraft accidents for non-military and non-private aircraft for the period from 1950 thru 2001.

Shappell at the Federal Aviation Administration Civil Aerospace Medical Institute and Wiegmann at the University of Illinois have been researching aviation accidents and their causes for many years. Shappell and Wiegmann state that:

Humans, by their very nature, make mistakes; therefore, it should come as no surprise that human error has been implicated in a variety of occupational accidents, including 70% to 80% of those in civil and military aviation. In fact, while the number of aviation accidents attributable solely to mechanical failure has decreased markedly over the past 40 years, those attributable at least in part to human error have declined at a much slower rate. Given such finding, it would appear that interventions aimed at reducing the occurrence or consequences of human error have not been as effective as those directed at mechanical failures. Clearly, if accidents are to be reduced further, more emphasis must be placed on the genesis of human error as it relates to accident causation.

C. Hall Jones & Associates, Inc., specializes in designing and delivering judgment and decision making courses and programs for four specific groups:

• leadershipand management personnel
   
• flight crew

• aviation maintenance and inspection personnel
   
• air traffic control personnel
   

Sound judgment and decision making requires four components:

• Technical knowledge. It is impossible for anyone or any team to make rational and effective decisions without a significant level of technical knowledge and expertise. The aviation community spends the majority of its education and training efforts on this single area.
   
• Practical experience. Experience is related to technical knowledge and expertise, but not nearly as closely as most people believe. True experience requires that the individual, or the team, be actively involved in all aspects of a situation including planning, implementation, evaluation, and making decisions concerning future actions based on the evaluation of past results. The aviation industry usually considers logged flight hours or calendar time in a position as constituting experience. These measures are actually very poor indicators of true experience.
   
• Judgment and decision making and critical thinking training. This component not included in virtually all civilian aviation education and training programs. This type of training is being conducted very successfully with verifiable, reproducible, positive results in the military and in civilian fields such as medicine and business. Considering that 50 to 90 percent of all aviation accidents are the direct result of human judgment and making errors, the omission of training in this area is a major impediment to improving aviation safety.
   
• Intuition. Intuition is the unique capability within each individual. Intuition takes the combination of technical knowledge, experience, and knowledge of judgment and decision making principles, processes these inputs, and produces the resulting judgment and decision. It is not currently possible to improve an individual’s level of intuition directly through education or training.

The objectives of our programs in judgment and decision making include:

• Preparing and equipping the participants to think seriously about judgment and decision making theories and issues and to understand some of the thinking processes that underlie their own and other people’s decision making.
   
• Reviewing a body of theory, research, and case studies on how people make decisions and using this knowledge to identify procedures for improving the participants’ own judgment and decision making.
   
• Providing the participants’ with a solid understanding of the basic processes involved in judgment and decision making.
   
• Sharpening the participant’s ability to think critically.
   
• Enhancing the participant’s ability to review and analyze current writings and research in judgment and decision making.
   
• Demonstrating knowledge of different types of decisions and decision making theory.
   
• Recognizing some of the primary impediments to effective individual and team decision making and understanding how these impediments can be overcome.
   
• Understanding and explaining the common errors and biases underlying judgment and decision making, their impact in personal and professional situations, and how to overcome them.
   
• Understanding the basic principles of effectively communicating risk and uncertainty.
   
• Understanding how experts differ from novices in the ways in which they make decisions and the implications and effects that these differences have for decision support functions.
   
• Demonstrating knowledge of various types of structured decision aids on real decision problems.
   
• Implementing the knowledge gained from judgment and decision making training to analyze case studies of accidents caused by judgment and decision making errors.

C. Hall Jones & Associates, Inc., includes the following topics in its training programs in judgment and decision making:

• What is “knowledge” as the term relates specifically to judgment and decision making; human mental processes; three dimensions of knowledge (cognition, affect, and conation); context and meaning; and decision support through knowledge management.
   
• Principles of rationality; rational acts, thoughts, and choices; theoretical versus practical rationality; formal versus substantive rationality; objective versus subjective rationality; limits of objective rationality; and rationality and good judgment and decision making.
   
• Critical thinking, reasoning, and logic; emotional versus intuitive reasoning.
   
• Classical decision making; analyzing an defining the problem; decision framing; identifying the criteria; weighing the criteria; generating possible alternatives; rating each alternative in relation to each criteria; determining the optimal decision; evaluating the decision; and applications of classical decision making in aviation. (Classical decision making is characterized by: a) well structured and well defined problems, b) certain, structured, static, or simulated environments, c) clear and stable goals, d) one-time decisions with few, if any, action and feedback loops, e) low levels of time stress, f) low stakes with little or no safety consequences, g) individual players, and h) individual goals)
   
• Naturalistic decision making; the role of domain experience; the role of intuition; heuristics; and cognitive task analysis. (Naturalistic decision making is characterized by: a) poorly structured and poorly defined problems, b) uncertain, unstructured, dynamic environments, c) shifting, poorly defined, unstable, and/or competing goals, d) combined decisions with complex action and feedback loops, e) high levels of time stress, f) high stakes with significant safety consequences, g) multiple players, and h) complex organizational goals)
   
• Impediments to good judgment and decision making; making decisions under uncertainty; making decisions under stress; considering the time frame; the concept and evaluation of risk; personal biases; interruptions and distractions; fatigue; human emotions; complacency; foreign substances; the increasing use of automation; and organizational challenges to judgment and decision making.
   
• Models of decision making; the DECIDE model; Reason’s Swiss cheese model; the rational choice model; the good reasons model; bounded rationality; recognition-primed decision model; situational awareness; shared mental models; image theory; cue recognition; and pattern and template recognition and matching.
   
• Improving judgment and decision making through education and training; can judgment really be taught; cognitive feedback; cockpit resource management (CRM); line oriented flight training (LOFT); simulation; scenario based training (FAA FITS program); and part-task training.
   
• What constitutes a judgment and decision making error; unique dynamics of multi-party decision making.
   
• Carefully selected and guided case studies, games, and group discussions that enhance the participants’ judgment and decision making understanding and capabilities and allow the participants to put what they have learned into practice.